Self protection, active shooters, and personal security

Richard Liebespach (Founder & CEO). Teaching people to be safe with our without a weapon. Please visit his website at http://selfprotection.co/

The things that differentiate Self Protection Essentials from the rest are an out growth of our philosophy and out core beliefs.

A cornerstone of our core beliefs is that we believe, at the core of our being, that we have been equipped to be able teach and with material to teach, that can save lives and save people from severe bodily harm. As a result, the martial arts and other material we have learned over several decades is the foundation of the physical techniques we teach. The material we teach is not everything we have learned. The material that we teach has been specifically chosen for its ability to be rapidly learned by people with no martial arts background. More than that, it is material that has been chosen because it is effective. And finally, it is material that almost every adult can perform adequately.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_04 0:06

This is the mission statement for our church security team.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I like the last part.

SPEAKER_04 0:16

And then the purpose statement of the team would be to keep people safe from the disruptive, potentially physically harmful and actually physically harmful action of others.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:30

And need to do that while enabling people to relax and worship God.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hello everybody, and we are back with Richard Liebesbeck, and we're gonna talk about his business from the point of view of personal protection. And we'll talk about active shooters and how best to defend yourself. I know this is a timely uh situation because if you like me that works in um the government industry, that is required training for many of us, the active shooter training. So hopefully this will be a benefit to you. And we are, as usual, so glad you are here. And I'm again, I'm Jeff Bennett, I'm the owner of Red Bite Publishing, and Red Bite Publishing does security books and training. And recently, we opened Bennett Institute. And you can go to Bennett B-E-N-N-E-T-T Institute.com and get free training, security clearance training, and we have free and paid option there, so we hope you'll come and visit. And we also would like to thank you so much for the exit support of our book, Insider's Guide to Security Clearance, which is at redbitepublishing.com or on Amazon.com. We'd also like to thank you for the tremendous support for Get Rich in the Niche, the Insider Guide to Self-Publishing in the Niche Industry, again on Redbite Publishing or on Amazon.com. And without further ado, let's get to the show.

SPEAKER_04 2:39

Well, that's probably true. We just started rambling when we when we first got here. So for those of us, for those who are listening or viewing, um, who haven't had a clue as to who we actually are, my name is Richard Levis Banak. My company is self-protection essentials. And as you've heard, I do podcasting as you and I also teach people how to stay safe and how to get to safety if need be, with or without a weapon.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

What are some of the um signs I know we talked about in our church, but maybe for the people who are listening, um, what are some of the um indicators that you might have a hostile actor visiting your church? Or, you know, a lot of times we greet people, and maybe we as a um member community can be looking out for uh sure.

SPEAKER_04 3:31

Basically, it comes down to body language. Uh the not all the nonverbal communications that might take place. We had this one guy come in carrying a bright green large bag, the kind of thing that you might get when you go to a grocery store or something like that to carry uh your food home instead of the plastic bags.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

And well, it's similar to the bags that Chris gave out at Podfest, only a little bit larger.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

He comes in, goes into the bathroom, changes clothes. He goes down and he sits next to somebody. A couple minutes later, he gets up, walks around, goes and sits next to somebody else in a different part of the sanctuary, gets up, walks around, goes and sits down with another group of people towards the front. Now, when he came in carrying this bag and went into the bathroom and changed clothes, it was kind of like, what the so we had eyes on him during the entire process that I just described. We ended up finding out that he was actually a relative of some of the other folks who were attending, and he had been bouncing around trying to figure out where his family was.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:47

Because he was meeting up with them. Right. He himself is homeless, but he's homeless by choice.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:55

And his family has tried to get him to long no longer be homeless, to go and be with them. And he says, nah, I'd rather be on the street.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Right. I know a lot of people like that in our ministry.

SPEAKER_04 5:08

But basically, it's you look for somebody who's out of place, might be somebody who's fidgety, looking around a bit, uh nervous, uh, dressed inappropriately, and you just go over to them and befriend them. I mean, we're there to fr to bring people to Christ in a friendly manner. Right. And so you see somebody who's out of place, you walk over to them, you start chit-chatting about anything. I mean, if you have if you're the kind of person who has a difficulty t talking to others, well, fine. There's a car in the parking lot that has this really cool paint job. Have you seen it? You had to have seen it. It's it's bright orange. Man, it's gorgeous. I don't know where the guy got that paint job from. By the way, uh, where are you from? My name is Rick. And onward you go. And during the time that you're doing this, if you're on the security team, you've probably got a radio of some kind. You just click it, click the button a couple times, and your security team leader is gonna know that somebody's trying to get his attention because the radios don't click unless somebody's trying to communicate. Yes. So now you've got backup about 20 or 30 feet away, being totally invisible. But you know he's got your back. So you're just befriending this guy. You've taken steps to be cautious just in case. And then a technique that I haven't seen published anywhere else, at least um, it's the donut technique.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

That's the donut technique.

SPEAKER_04 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:56

You just ask the guy, hey, I'm hungry. You want a donut? And you walk him across the lobby and get him a donut.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

There you go.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

I I have never read a story so far where somebody got shot for giving somebody else a donut.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Cup of coffee, cup of a glass of water, whatever, right? Whatever's available.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

There was a gentleman who was going to be an active shooter at his place of employment. He had his car loaded up with three rifles and other stuff and a bunch of hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Man.

SPEAKER_04 7:26

And he's sitting in the parking lot trying to get up the nerve to go in and shoot up everybody. He'd been through the ringer and seemed like nobody cared about him. Um, and he'd just given up. Well, he didn't do the shooting. He didn't do the shooting because this woman who worked with him saw him in the parking lot sitting there in the car, waved over at him, said hi, and walked inside. Nice. And he decided that he wasn't gonna do it because she smiled at him and waved.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, I want to tell you about a brand new sponsor to DOD Secure, and they're an actual Department of Defense contractor. They are called mission-driven research, and the core values are to go the extra mile for their customers, for their employees personally and professionally, and give generously to their community. And I can tell you they are very generous. They sponsor a lot of races, they get people off the couch to run, and they send people on mission trips, they do a lot. Um, they're Mission Driven Research Inc. is a growing company that provides technical services to the US federal government. The goal of MDR is to continuously improve performance in three core values. And so I read you those core values off. If you want to get in touch with Mission Driven Research, you can go to their website at missiondrivenresearch.com. Welcome aboard, guys. We're glad to have you. Not regularly.

SPEAKER_04 9:13

Okay. Have you ever heard of the 21-foot rule?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Um, we, if you remind me, I probably have because we have active shooter training a lot.

SPEAKER_04 9:22

Okay. In that case, it's it has come up then. Uh Sergeant Dennis Tuuler of Denver Police Department back in the late 70s did a study with his friends. He took a bunch of them down to the shooting range and had them from their holster condition pull out their service book uh firearm and put two holes in a piece of paper downrange. On average, it took his fellow officers a second and a half to to do that.

unknown 9:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

And then what he did is he found out that the average person can travel 21 feet in a second and a half.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 10:07

So if somebody has a knife and they start charging you and they're 15 feet away, you don't have enough time to pull out your gun from a from an open carry condition and put two shots on them. At 21 feet, you might or might not be able to pull that off. But even if you did, let's say you you're the fastest one out there and you get him when he's still 10 feet away. Well, handgun rounds don't stop people very well. But if you happen to have put two rounds in his heart, then yeah, you succeeded. Problem is he's now moving forward by the momentum of his own mass with his knife up and it falls down and comes into your chest anyway.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

So that so the dead man kills you.

unknown 10:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

So the 21-foot rule basically says that if somebody's being that aggressive, an average person can cover that far. So how much distance do you need to stay safe?

SPEAKER_01 11:10

So you just saw how long it takes me, it took me to read. So you measured out was that a hundred feet? Yeah. So we're looking at a tape measure with a hundred feet. Coming back for number two. Seven seconds. Right.

SPEAKER_04 11:37

So the average person can run twenty feet in a second and a half. That's thirty that's uh we'll call it twenty feet. In uh three seconds, that means they can go forty. Six seconds around eighty. You just saw I did a hundred feet in six and a half, seven seconds. So the lesson there is uh if somebody's shooting and they have to do a mag change, you have uh that much time to get to safety. If you're in the middle of a sanctuary, I almost guarantee you, unless it's one of these mega churches, you're within a hundred feet of a door. Um if everybody is moving towards the same door, go in the opposite direction.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Right. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

Because if he's gonna be tracking anybody, he's gonna be tracking the mass because he's looking for a high score.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Okay, gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 12:38

Uh but the opposite of that is also extremely true. If you're someplace and you now detect that a reload is happening, and let's say he's got six seconds to reload, like I did, without anybody throwing stuff at me, how far can I be away and still get to him before he can open up again?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Right.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

So let's say on the conservative side, 50 or 60 feet. If I'm 50 or 60 feet away, half the distance between one residential driveway and the next, then I've got enough time to reach him before whatever it is he's using for a weapon becomes dangerous again.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

That's a good point. That's a good point. Um I hope a lot of people see that.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

While he's reloading, what does he have? He has nothing more than a big metal stick. Right. Yeah. I am not afraid of a big metal stick.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

And plus, if you're running at him, maybe he's distracted.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

Yes. And I've actually gone through training sessions where I've demonstrated before that if all I have is a bottle cap or eye drops, that's enough. Uh anything that I mean, you saw the stuff that was being tossed in my head in in this in the first video. I wasn't pretending to be dodging them. I knew they were gonna be coming, obviously, since I choreographed the video. But one of the things that really stood out to me later was even though I knew they were coming and completely harmless to me, I was still actually dodging them. It was just an instinct that took over. I didn't ignore them like rain, but I reacted as if something was actually being thrown in my head. It could have been beer bottles or concrete blocks. Instead it was beach toys, and it couldn't hurt me. I knew that beforehand. But I still dodged, I had no choice in the matter. I I had no choice in the matter. My best instincts took over. So let's say I'm in a la in a uh nightclub someplace. Somebody starts shooting things up, there's a bottle of beer on the table or whatever it might be. So now if I have a bottle of beer and I'm throwing it at his head, that gets me what another second? What if you and your three friends all start start also start throwing things at his head? That six second reload is now taking him ten more seconds or more. I can cover a lot of distance in that time. Once I get there, who cares if the guy hits me with the gun? I I already know that it's irrelevant. I've tried stuff like that before. Uh so I already know it's irrelevant. He can't really injure me with an empty gun unless he's really a lot more skilled than I give him credit for. But as soon as I get to him and delay him for even three seconds, now there's another 400 pounds of mass on the two of us as people start to pile on top. So me and four other guys that's close to a thousand pounds now of weight on this guy. He's not doing anything else anymore. He's got a thousand pounds of weight on his chest.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

He is done. Yeah. And not to mention like beer bottles, but you got chairs, wallets, keys, coins, and church. You got Bibles, notebooks, pens, um, song hymnals, all that. You got a lot of stuff to throw.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

There's a shoes. I I oftentimes carry a water bottle with me because if I start to cough a little bit, I want to put I don't want to be disruptive. So I'll take a drink with me just in case. My wife does also. A lot of the uh younger kids in uh church, but they'll have backpacks because they got babies and they have their coloring books and diapers and uh whatever else might be inside. There's lots of things handy for you to do stuff with. I was at an active shooter training once put on by uh Connells County Sheriff's Office, I think it was. And part way through, I mean, it was the best active shooter training I've ever seen. They actually had about 15 law enforcement officers there, and during one of the sessions they had uh people actually demonstrating what it would be like. So you go down here and it would be kind of like going to Disneyland, watching the thing, and it's people actually doing a shooting drill there. Uh well after we bring us all back into the main room, down the hallway you hear these shots being fired. Now everybody knows that it's part of the thing. Nobody believes that it might be something real. We're all just going, okay, what's the next part of the show?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Right.

SPEAKER_04 17:58

And the next part of the show from their perspective was to point out none of you guys did anything. Well, I I realized that we're moving in that direction. So after waiting longer than I knew I should have, I got up and I took my pen out of my shirt and I'm here ready to toss it in the direction of whoever comes through that doorway. As I start moving in that direction myself, when he brought the scenario to an end, he never saw me moving.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 18:29

And the pen may not be much, but if it goes at his head, it might be enough time for myself or somebody closer to to do something.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah, he's flinching, he's c ducking, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 18:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:42

Gotta get gotta get the word out there, otherwise people if you don't think about it now, you'll be incapable of thinking about it at the time you need it.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

That's right. That's right. You've got to practice and rehearse. And maybe that's what your book will do is re get people thinking now so that they'll uh be able to respond appropriately in in the future.

SPEAKER_04 19:03

And and my book has uh three good uh worst case scenarios in it. Um what are you gonna do if an active shooter comes into your congregation and sits in the middle of everybody else? What are you gonna do if an active shooter comes in and takes over that second floor soundbooth? What are you gonna do if some terrorist organization decides to attack five churches on the same weekend? Probably it would be good Friday. Um not good Friday, it would be uh Palm Sunday, the week before Easter. So if some terrorist organization decides to attack a bunch of five different churches across the country on the Palm Sunday, nobody's gonna come back to church on Easter. If your church is one of them, and they send eight guys, they're gonna put two in the sound booth, two on each side of the building so that people start going out the side exits and then a few moments later, after the initial attack, the remainder of their crew goes into the youth building. Those eight or nine guys could easily kill 600 people without losing any of their own people.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

So we've been discussing the adjudicative guidelines and red flags that come up. Sometimes those red flags can come up before you ever get your security clearance, and sometimes something can happen while you're in possession of the security clearance. Sometimes it happens. In spite of living a life above reproach, you've had an event that could put your security clearance in jeopardy. You know, you need to talk to somebody about it, but before you discuss it with anyone at work or even with your facility security officer, contact our sponsor, Ron Sixtus. Call him immediately for help, and you can self-report in the best possible way. You can reach Ron at 256-713-0221. You can email him at R Sixtus. That's R-S-Y-K-S-T-U-S at V-O-N-D N V-O-T-E-S dot com. Or visit his website at www.securityclearance defense lawyer.com.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

I also teach people how to stay safe and how to get to safety if need be, with or without a weapon. I'm located in Florida, so I also do Florida conceal weapons permits. But a lot of places you can't have a gun. I'm one of the few NRA firearms instructors who writes articles about how worthless a gun is. There's all sorts of places you can't take it. There's plenty of times where you can't. Use it. Either you can't get it out in time, or if you do get it out, you can't take the shot because of all the innocent people nearby. And every shot you fire has a lawyer attached to it. There's a lot of times when a gun is absolutely worthless. When it is, how are you going to take care of yourself? Well, that's where all you've got is your hands and your wits. As many people have already pointed out, we actually have only one weapon, and that's the one between our ears. Everything else is a tool.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

There you go.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

So if somebody did want to receive training in how to stay safe, how self-protection, um when I do it, I teach them concepts. I'll use physical techniques and videos and discussion to get around to actually teaching them uh concepts. One thing I want them to do is I want them to get mad. Only I spell mad M A D D D. It stands for mindset, awareness, avoidance, deterrence, and uh uh de-escalation. And if need be self-defense. I teach self-protection, I don't teach self-defense because self-defense is oh my god, I'm being attacked. Now what do I do? Self-protection is let's not go there in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

There you go.

SPEAKER_04 23:23

But if that's where you end up, you had better have the material you need to get the time you need to get to safety.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 23:33

Um my orientation is oriented around safety, getting the time you need to get to safety. If somebody's attacking you and there are complete cluts, they trip over their own shoelaces, and right now they're right there, right on the ground, their head is this far away. Many people in this industry will tell you take the kick and get out of there. Because you want to make sure that he can't get up and come get you before you're someplace safe. Well, I tell him no, I don't want you to do that on a number of reasons. One, I don't want you punching, I don't want you kicking. But let's say you go for it, he sees the kick coming and he covers up in the process of covering up. What happens if that hand bumps your ankle and that causes you to lose your balance, and now you're down there on the ground with him? What good did what good did it do you? He's on the ground. It doesn't matter if he was there because he's a complete klutz. Get out of there. You've got the time to get away. You've got the time to get to safety if your opponent is on the ground.

unknown 24:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 24:39

So by going over that time and time again throughout the thing, that um I've given people the permission. I'm enabling them to leave as soon as it's feasible. Instead of one more kick and I'm out of here. No, don't bother with that one more kick. Just get out. You've got the time.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

That's right. That's right. So that's a great point. And what's the name of your podcast? So my guys can come to your podcast.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

Name of my podcast is self-protection essentials.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

That's easy to remember. Self-protection essentials.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

Yep. Yeah. And I'm putting together my first official webinar.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Good.

SPEAKER_04 25:22

Yeah. So what do you think I should include in that webinar? What kind of what content do you think people would be interested in?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Um, I think, like you said earlier, um, you have to have your your um anchor point. That's what a one of the guests told me before that I had interviewed. His name is Ray Simcoe, and he's called Ray the Dice Man Simcoe. And his um anchor point was D-I-C-E, defensive information countering everything. And so he built everything around that. I like your mad. Um giving permission to get out of there. Um, I think we we we feel like as as men, we've got to fight and we've got to um do everything. But I took karate as a child and they taught me as a young age, they taught me how to um if somebody comes at you with a knife, I'm gonna teach you. And they taught me the about face and run. They made it look very karate style. You do your moving, get out of there because there's no need. You know, it's not like the movies.

unknown 26:27

No.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

No, if you're finding of all the different things that we've discussed, whether it be a gun or a big metal stick or an actual stick, um we haven't actually talked about knives until just then. I am more afraid of a knife than I am a gun. Because I know that there's a lot of places that you can be shot and it won't kill you. I have a video of these two guys in front of a convenience store. It's a civilian video, so there's no sound. These two guys are talking. One is a big guy, the other one's relatively thin and small. The small guy is gonna go inside and rob the store. Don't know what the conversation is, but eventually the little guy pulls the gun out, shoots the big guy in the stomach. The big guy turns and walks away. As he's walking away, the little guy shoots him in the back. And the big guy continues to walk away. Little guy goes into the convenience store, robs it, leaves. The guy who posted the video cuts out the next six minutes of video. So, somewhere around the seven-minute mark now, the big guy comes walking back in. You see him, he's right there in front of the store where he was earlier. He stumbles, falls to the ground, and as he's getting back up, you can see that the back of his shirt is all filled with blood. He finishes getting back up and he walks away. This is after being shot seven minutes prior, twice. Once in the stomach, once in the back, and he's still walking around. There's a lot of places where you can get shot and it's not gonna kill you ever, or kill you right now. And he had plenty of time to get EMT to him to save his life. Don't know if he ever did or not. That wasn't part of the video that was posted. But if you're fighting somebody who has a knife, you're not gonna know it. You're gonna think that you've just been punched eight times, and then you're gonna wonder, wait a minute, why is my shirt wet? But anybody you ever find yourself in a conflict with who has a knife, they also have a second knife. Ornight. I've been told that 90% of the people who uh do have fights on the street, the guy that has a knife has two of them.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

That is good stuff to know because I'm one of those who who um pretty much lived a charmed life and I don't think about these scenarios, but uh, you know, for my sake and my family's sake, it's time to start thinking about things and at least, you know, not obsess, but think about it and think, you know, where am I? What is the risk? And what do I need to do to make sure I don't find myself, or if I find myself in a in a vulnerable position, how do I get out of it? Again, I'm so glad you were able to join us for our podcast today, and we're so glad to have Rick on to explain to us about protecting ourselves in many different situations. Hope, like I was, that you were able to learn a lot from Rick and uh would appreciate it if you would visit his website. We will have some links available for you. And give him a look up if you're interested more about church security or personal security. Rick, we appreciate you being with us and look forward to possibly re-engaging with you in the future. If you would like to get in touch with Rick otherwise, you can email me at editor at redbikepublishing.com, and I'll be happy to pass on any questions, concerns, or comments to Rick. We'd appreciate it if you visit us at redbikepublishing.com or Bennett Institute.com. As usual, have a great one and be safe out there and look forward to having you back at our next podcast.